His friendly contacts with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have caused him to be described as "the unofficial spokesman of the Iranian government in Argentina" and as a "hit man for Iran".

[2] Luis D'Elía was born on 27 January 1957 at the Clínica Modelo de Morón, Buenos Aires, into a family belonging to the working middle class.

She later admired Scioli, Sergio Massa, and the Kirchners, and despised Menem, Rodríguez Saá, De la Sota, Schiaretti, and Duhalde.

D'Elía grew up in the parish of Don Bosco in Villa Luzuriaga, a section of the Buenos Aires district of La Matanza, and had two siblings, Ariel and Mabel.

The Church of Don Bosco was the family's "political cradle", and D'Elía's mentor, with whom he would remain close throughout his adult life, was the "progressive" Salesian priest Fr.

The campaign went through a difficult period, with infighting, poor living conditions, and a food-supply crisis, and at one point D'Elía, feeling demoralized, left his tent and returned to his ranch with his wife.

That night one of the other activist leaders, a mulatto mother of 12 children, came to his home, slapped him, and, calling him a "chickenshit asshole", told him, "you're the only one who can lead this".

In 1992, D'Elía was appointed head teacher at School # 188 in La Matanza, but while retaining the title and collecting a salary, he never actually took up the position in practice.

In 1995, Carlos Chacho Alvarez, leader of Frente por un País Solidario (FREPASO, or Front for a Country in Solidarity), a new party which had been formed in 1994, invited him to join its list of candidates for city councilors in La Matanza.

Around this time, D'Elía began organizing unemployed and homeless people; he remained active in SUTEBA, the teachers' union, which upon the formation of the Central de los Trabajadores Argentinos (Confederation of Argentine Workers, or CTA), became a leading member of that federation.

[6] It was reported in January 2001 that union members under the control of D'Elía compelled beneficiaries of state aid to hand part of it over to them on threat of losing the entire benefit.

[7] D'Elía, who was mentioned by several witnesses in a legal case about the extortion charges, admitted that recipients of the aid were asked to make "a social contribution.

A pregnant woman later testified that she had been inside the police station during the incident with her husband and a child, and that D'Elía and his confederates had not allowed them to leave.

He also testified that D'Elía's group had stolen from the police station a charcoal by the artist Quinquela Martin, as well as records of court cases, hard drives, and bulletproof vests.

D'Elía and 42 of his confederates were accused of damage, theft, unlawful imprisonment, threats, injuries, and extortion, among other offenses, he enjoyed "parliamentary privileges" as a member of the Buenos Aires legislature that caused the case to proceed "very slowly" through the judicial system.

[12][13][14][15] In 2006, D'Elía took on Douglas Tompkins, the American founder of the North Face and Esprit clothing lines, who had bought land in Argentina to create an ecological preserve.

He also expressed the view that "These lands should not belong to an individual, much less a foreigner," and, according to The Washington Post, "publicly hinted that he believes Tompkins is an agent of the U.S.

The BBC described him as a "stocky man with an angry mien" who identified "'tierra gringa,' the gringo lands," on a map, "like a general pinpointing the enemy."

In 2006, Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral ordered the international arrest of eight former Iranian officials, including former President Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani, in connection with the bombing.

It was reported on 28 April 2007 that D'Elía had spoken "highly" of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the previous day, and had promised to investigate "the Israeli right" for its alleged participation in the AMIA bombing.

Joining him on the panel, and agreeing with his views, were former national deputy Mario Cafiero and Sheikh Ali Mohsen of Casa para la Difusión del Islam.

Sergio Widder, Latin American representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, described D'Elía of using "the prestige of the Book Fair to bastardize the AMIA case".

Sergio Burstein, leader of a group of victims of the AMIA bombing, accused D'Elía of treating Argentine Jews as second-class citizens and of denying them their status as Argentinians.

[2] In June 2011, D'Elía said that Sergio Schoklender, former attorney of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Foundation, was disqualified from high office owing to his status as a Jew, given that he might therefore be an agent of the MOSSAD.

[32] In August 2013, D'Elía took part in a meeting at the At-Tauhid mosque in Buenos Aires at which Sheikh Abdul Karim Paz, head of the mosque, called for the destruction of Israel and spoke up for Mohsen Rabbani, former cultural attaché at the Iran's embassy in Buenos Aires, who was wanted for his alleged involvement in the 1994 AMIA bombing.

[34] In November 2014, after federal judge Claudio Bonadio ordered to investigate an hotel company for a corruption scandal involving the Argentine President, D'Elía said "Symbolically we should put the head of Bonadío on a pike.